![]() The numerous electrolytic capacitors on the motherboard is likely to be the weakest link of system reliability. That said, there is some truth that leaving the machine on takes its toll: capacitors. With inadequately designed circuits, inrush currents from turning the machine on could also stress some components, though this is not all that likely. Also, there were some older drives that (when cooled down enough) could stop working altogether because of "stiction". It's true that the mechanical stresses of power cycling is hard on the HDD. It had absolutely nothing to do with shutting the machine down at night. The only reason he got away with it is sheer dumb luck. Someone running a "server" with a single disk and no backup is a fool, not an admin. Sure there are ways around this but why not give your backups every chance of success when there is nothing to lose by doing so? This helps to ensures backups are consistent. Backups are best taken when there is no or little user activity. Nighttime, or whatever other time is "quiet" for a given system is the time to run all the maintenance and automation.Į.g. There is no reason to shut it down at night but some very good reasons to leave it running. Servers (meaning a machine with proper server grade components) are design to run continuously. That doesn't mean any individual drive won't fail a whole lot sooner. On average server drives will last anything from about 3 years upwards, with 10 or 20 years not being too uncommon. I'm sure most of us have received at least one brand new drive that was DOA. The only thing I can see that's even close to right about what you've been told is that drives can fail within 2 years. That said, typically you still generall don't turn servers off. The taxi analogy doesn't really suit todays modern servers. Not only to mention most servers can take upwards of 2-5 minutes to just get past the BIOS checks, it's a huge amount of wasted time too.Ģ018 Update: Given that most computers are now essentailly entirely solid-state, this answer may no longer be as accurate as it once was. Turning your server on and off is a stupid idea. If there's any time it's going to fail, chances are it will be on boot up. Chances are the disk access from booting the OS is fairly solid activity, whereas when the OS is running, unless it's a very heavy database server (I'm guessing not), the disks will most likely stay fairly idle. Also, think about how much disk activity the server undergoes during boot up vs when it's working. ![]() When it starts up, the power it draws climbs very high, and then it settles down once all the disks have spun up and the processor is initalised. Just attach an amp meter to your computer, and turn it on. The majority of the "wear" on parts can happen when the server is booting up. The reason for this is because they are always running, 24/7, and after a car's engine is up to temperature, the amount of wear it receives while it is running is greatly reduced.Ī computer is kinda the same. To liken it to a car analogy: A taxi can do over 500,000 kilometers before it needs an engine rebuild.
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